


what comes after fate

by wordswithinmoments



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Moving On, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:01:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27601093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordswithinmoments/pseuds/wordswithinmoments
Summary: they say the number three is reserved for what fate has in store, and you just hope that on the third time, kuroo tetsurou would finally choose you.
Relationships: Kuroo Tetsurou & Reader, Kuroo Tetsurou/Reader
Comments: 5
Kudos: 93





	what comes after fate

**Author's Note:**

> crossposted on my tumblr! (myelocin)

“I’m always here for you,” is what you used to say instead of _“I love you,”_ because for a while, Tetsurou’s heartfelt “ _Thank you,”_ sufficed.

You never bothered to learn her name, but you knew he called her _love_. And it was fitting, you think. Because the first time around, when you were only nineteen and feeling like all that you’ll ever have in the world will be found in the _now_ —love was what was in front of you.

But in front of him was her.

 _She_ with the sweet dimpled smiles, freckled cheeks under the right amount of sunshine, and the waters of the pacific for eyes.

She.

 _Her_.

_Love._

So for Kuroo Tetsurou—what he thought was his future was her. _His_ love.

Then for you, what you _thought_ was love was him.

Tetsurou who used to be the boy who snuck into your room from your windows, a bag of donuts in one hand, and his car keys in the other. The love you sought to be part of your future was what was in the moment. _Him._

And even if the summer nights you spent with him meant listening to stories of _she_ whose name you still can’t recall—it was fine. Because when you were sixteen, those same nights in bloom where the stars above that twinkled brighter than the city lights looked down on you—you knew there would always be a slice in history when it was just the both of you.

 _“She’s something else,”_ you’d listen to him say, and the way Tetsurou’s eyes would squint when he smiled at the sky only had you thinking that it looked like he was looking at the sun instead of the moon.

 _Love,_ you come to conclude, _wasn’t blind._ It was what gave the smallest details the brightest spotlights as it comes into center stage.

For him it was the way _love_ would scrunch her nose at his questions, tuck her hair behind her ear when she was called to answer a question in class, and quite evidently his favorite—the way her voice would hike up half a pitch if she was flustered enough.

And when Tetsurou would turn to face you and ask, _“Have you ever been in love?”_ with his voice as breathless as you always caught yourself to be when he smiles at you,you could only nod your head.

“ _I guess I have,”_ would come your reply as you exhale. Your truth being the very thing that has your heart racing one minute before diving recklessly in the next.

“Who?” Tetsurou would ask, his voice always teasing.

He smiles, gold eyes glowing like the bokeh of streetlights faded in the background, and the sight has you holding your breath.

“Just someone,” you’d reply and pray that your message somehow reaches him despite the wordless confession.

“Someone, huh,” he’d repeat your words with an almost dreamlike expression as he turns away and looks up at the stars again. The summer breeze tugs at the sleeve of your blouse and as it leaves you exhale your truth with it.

“What if it’s you?” you say, looking at him, and the wind retreats to the trees as it gives your truth the chance to be known with a stage of silence.

“What do you mean me?” Tetsurou asks quietly.

The wind stays in the trees, the leaves rustling the only thing you can hear with the silence that hangs in the air. You can’t tell if it’s on your side or not, so you turn from the skies and face him instead.

“That’s just my truth,” you tell him, smiling softly.

He smiles at you, eyes patient and the hand that found yours warm.

“Your truth, huh?” he repeats next to you again, and your heart flutters at the silver lining you found in his eyes. And that same silver lining was what ignited the flames of hope in you that lasted _far_ longer than you would have liked.

After you spoke your truth, what you saw in the smile he offered you was the first step, and because you loved him, you took it upon yourself to walk three steps forward instead of only one.

 _Love really wasn’t blind,_ you realize again. In your case, it was just _blinding._

_-_

You were still blinded after that night, and you don’t come to realize it as soon as you would have preferred to.

The first time Tetsurou loves, seven months later he lets go and returns to you with a tremble in his lips and a yearning for the comfort that left his heart.

 _“You just love too much,”_ you wanted to say, but before the words could pass your lips, you were rendered speechless as the epiphany strikes you that you weren’t far off from where he was.

 _Too much,_ being the fact that you still stayed despite the morning after you laid your truth bare, he came to you with _love_ holding his hand and a newfound radiance laced with his smile. But it worked out, you suppose, because seven months later Tetsurou stands in front of you again with his car keys in one hand and a bag of donuts in the other.

“Sappy nights and star gazing again?” are the words he says coupled with the same pair of golden eyes are what took you to release the tension in your shoulders and slip back in the cycle.

The cycle, being the fact that you’re lying on your backs in the very field you set your truth free, with his eyes and the background bokeh lights making you want to take another dive again. Beside you, Tetsurou is silent, but the look on his face is making you wonder if he’s struggling to explain the infinite all over again.

“I should have just loved you,” is what he says to break the silence, and just like that, your heart’s leaping to dive again.

“You still can, you know,” you answer, because you mean it. The truth of the matter was you always were still there despite his departure. Your heart left at the gate for him to claim when— _if—_ he returned, while your body waited somewhere nearby to watch for his arrival.

“I’ve always been and I always will be here for you, Tetsu,” you finish, smiling with the honesty wrapped with your words.

“Are you really giving your heart that easily?” Tetsurou asks, and his voice you hear more than a sliver of vulnerability, so you take that as a cue to wade in waters even deeper by yourself. The golds of his eyes looked like the embers of a fire, but despite the absence of flame you still could feel the resonance of warmth.

You want to keep the warmth, so you fan the flames.

“That’s just my truth, Tetsu,” you tell him with nothing but raw vulnerability.

The wind ceases to rustle in the trees, because in this night, you feel it dancing on your shoulders: on the strands of your hair that you fastened with a clip behind your hair, and at Tetsurou’s lashes as he stares and blinks at you slowly.

“You said the same thing back then,” he laughs in a whisper, and when he leans in—you stay as still as the wind that you barely even realize has stopped moving.

 _“Because I meant it,”_ you try to say, but his lips are already on yours before the thoughts in your brain could even get a chance to try to connect.

 _Every word of it,_ you think to yourself as you look at Tetsurou, with his eyes closed and face up, bathing in moonlight.

-

He doesn’t call you _love,_ like he did with her, but he calls you _friend._

 _“I guess we just got carried away,”_ he tells you a few weeks later, and for the second time, you can only nod your head, mouth silent, but thoughts raging at his words.

You think about that night, of his sadness, then at how lonely his lips felt pressed against yours. Perhaps _“carried away,”_ really was a good way to explain things, because in the second time you saw the silver lining for reciprocation in his eyes again, instead of taking one step and meeting him in the middle—you took it upon yourself to leap to three and meet him at his doorstep instead.

Only he hadn’t bothered to cross his own threshold as you already made it way past the boundary of yours.

But it should have been fine, because love was patient, right?

So you offer him a smile, knocking your shoulder against his again and exhaling silently as you swirl the melting cubes of ice around your glass again.

The world outside is storming, so the café the two of you found served as a nice refuge to let the storm pass.

The condensation drips on the side, and as you look at the rain still pouring outside, in that moment you feel a little trapped.

“You figured yourself out?” you ask him, nudging at his shoulder and setting your gaze down to look at your drink.

For a few moments, Tetsurou doesn’t answer you, instead opting to just keep his attention focused on the raindrops beating against the window the two of you are sat behind.

“How do we even know if we figured ourselves out?” he eventually chuckles, his shoulders dropping at the change of atmosphere.

You grin, not exactly sure how to formulate the answer to his question with only words, but you let out a sigh and attempt to do so anyway.

“We don’t,” you tell him truthfully. “I guess there are just moments where we feel so sure of something that it feels like we have shit figured out, but that could also change in the next moment. I guess what I’m meaning to ask is if anything has clicked for you at the moment?”

“I guess there has,” he tells you, setting his gaze down for a brief second. That’s when you notice the slight tug at the corner of his lips, so you drop your straw back down the glass and give him a pointed look.

“Care to share?” you say with a laugh.

“I don’t wanna break your heart,” is Tetsurou’s truth, because when he turns to face you for the first time that night—you can see hesitation evident in his eyes.

“Because I love you?” you ask, not really seeking for an answer, but you get one anyway when Tetsurou hangs his head and reshifts his gaze to something in the corner of the table.

“I already told you two truths before, didn’t I?” you question him once more, and beside you, Tetsurou stays silent instead of just nodding his head.

“I guess I owe you another truth then,” you start, pushing your ice filled glass to the side and folding your arms in front of you as you lean forward on the table.

Facing forward, you look at the force of the rain, then listen for the sound of the wind that hides behind no trees this time because tonight it’s in front of you raging as if to say it’s _really_ time for you to spill your truth—in its entire vulnerability.

So take it as a cue, and do just that.

“You’ve already broken my heart twice, Tetsu. I think I still have it in me to take one more,” you declare in a voice that isn’t a whisper, and just how it was in the past, your heart still managed to leap with your words.

“I can take it,” you repeat, locking eyes with him through the reflection of the darkened window in front of you. Because of the distortion, you can’t read the expression in his eyes. Tetsurou was someone who always happened to be just the right kind of transparent for you, because for as long as you’ve known him—his emotions were as easy to read as the intention he expressed them with.

First, he sighs: the kind that’s deep and slowly released like he’s an old man looking over his will. Then, he turns his head again to look at you, and you could already see the apology swimming in the golden eyes you’ve come to adore before he could open his mouth.

 _“I’m sorry,”_ it says, and when you focus on the sounds of the rain instead of his voice that comes, the only thing you can read from his lips was because for him _love,_ had always been _her._

Tetsurou’s _love,_ whose name you still can’t recall to this day.

 _Love,_ with her ocean eyes and poetry for words, and you can’t hate her because you don’t even know her.

“Friends?” he asks you, and you only shoot a smile his way, before looking forward at the windows again.

If something was _fate,_ you recall, it happens on the third time. As you wait for the rain to slow, you allowed yourself to fall in step with the silence so you could gather your thoughts.

A phone rings—Tetsurou’s, you recognize, and when he picks it up, there is sunshine in the tone of his voice.

 _Love,_ he greets. So, you think about _love._

But the love where fate was involved. _Three,_ you think. It was supposed to be on the _third._

The first time you meet Tetsurou through the rose colored lenses you wore yourself, the truth you gave him— _which he listened to—_ counted as the first. You scoff inwardly when you think about the outcome, because despite the silver lining he gave you, for him, _love_ was somebody who wasn’t you.

The second, was in that night he kissed you. A kiss that felt like its beginnings came straight from between the pages of a story book. Where prince charming heard your truth once more and decided that _this time,_ _love_ was you, and that _this_ was right.

You realize that you forgot to count the fact that with a fresh wound also came a different sort of vulnerability. The kind where it sought healing more than reason.

And that night, perhaps because you laid yourself bare too—your healing meant his comfort instead of the salvation he sought after.

So the two times he loves, let goes, and cries all with a love that still isn’t you.

Where he loved her once, let go and realized that he loved her still, and for the third time came back to her but this time stayed. The first, second, and third for you meant a rebounded sort of love and misunderstood connections, while the three for him meant the _love_ fate had long promised.

Because in the third, you realize as you listen to him speak to _love_ over the phone— _the third, or fate, is where he stays._ He talks about her like you would him, and when the rain drops harder with the howling wind, you awaken to the truth that it _hurts._

 _So what comes after the third?_ you ask the storm outside. _You’re also the third storm of the season, so what now?_

The wind doesn’t slow, but it rattles at the glass on the window even harder, so you try to find your answer in that. The wind was always on your side, you like to think.

After the third, you begin to think, comes something _else._ It isn’t the _first_ where you begin again, or the _second_ where you think about second chances and rewriting failed endings. In contrary, it isn’t the third where things finally click together either—like all the movies suggest.

The answer is simple; because what comes after the third is simply the fourth.

 _The fourth,_ being the careful steps taken to walk away. Where the heaviness in your chest means that you’re finally facing the blunt of the storm outside the eye of the hurricane. It’s leaving that false safety net that moreso trapped you for a lot longer that you realized, instead of protect you.

It’s grabbing your bag and thanking your lucky stars for bringing an umbrella with you, because you only tap him on the shoulder once and wave goodbye when you’re already halfway out the door. It’s walking through the puddles in your favorite pair of heels and almost losing your balance, if it wasn’t for the unusual gust of wind that kept you upright at the very last second. It’s looking at him when you finally make it across the street, sheltered under an awning, as he only looks down at his drink and smiles the kind of smile that you used to smile for him. It’s crying in vulnerability and thanking the rain along with the rose colored lenses Tetsurou wore because with that he couldn’t see the fact that your heart still hurts despite you saying that you could _“take his truth.”_

The fourth is saying “ _fuck you,”_ and “ _I’m done,”_ for as many times as you wish until your lungs give out and your throat becomes more hoarse than relieved. Because at the end of the day, letting yourself cry is a different sort of relief when you’re finally allowing yourself to realize that despite the steps you’ve taken for healing—shit just _fucking sucks._

But what comes after fate, most importantly—is yourself.

It’s shaking off the raindrops, drying your hair, and getting in that taxi, the image of golden eyes against bokeh lights the last thing on your mind. Where you don’t shut off your phone, but mute his contact despite the _what ifs_ calling you back at every stoplight.

You’re only reminded of your position in the present when the lights turn green, and just like that, you just _go._

 _Yourself,_ being the person you begin to prioritize, because when Tetsurou texts you again, a photo of him with his car keys and a familiar box of donuts in hand, your only reply is a quick “I’m busy tonight,” and nothing more.

What comes after fate is _yourself_ because after facing the reality of the storm that’s _been_ raging, and making peace with the message the wind has been _trying_ to deliver, you finally see the waiting sun peaking behind the exhausted rainclouds.

 _Vanilla skies,_ you smile. They’re the first thing that greets you, and your breath is stolen just like that.

Tetsurou’s name flashes on your screen again, but you don’t see it. What comes after fate is standing under the swirls of vanilla in the sky while the stars of your yesterday’s midnight sky calls you for company yet again, and you, not bothering to answer.

You think of golden eyes, the bokeh city lights, and the plethora of stars dancing around the moon. Your heart aches, but it’s the kind where it dulls as quick as it comes, so you breathe in and bask in the smell of morning dewdrops after the heavy rainfall.

A missed call, and a text that reads “ _I miss you”_ comes.

You leave it unread.

Because truth be told, you always preferred the vanilla skies over the moonlit nights anyway.


End file.
